‘The UK Investor visa (1994-2022): a tumultuous history’ – an online talk by Sarah Kunz

Sarah Kunz will discuss her work on the UK Investor visa – Britain’s wealth-based immigration pathway that offered a straightforward route to permanent residence, and eventually citizenship, for those who could afford it. The visa category was introduced in 1994 by Conservative Home Secretary Michael Howard with an eye to wealthy Hong Kongers and white South Africans eager to leave their respective countries at the eve of political change. It was abolished in February 2022 by Conservative Home Secretary Priti Patel citing security concerns in the context of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

Sarah’s talk will trace the tumultuous history of the UK Investor visa through its 28-year existence, from earlier efforts to attract ‘entrepreneurs’ to the gradual tightening of legislation in response to multiple scandals and geopolitical events. She will place changing policy and debate within social, political and economic context, ranging from financial crime legislation to the ‘hostile environment’. She will show how migration policy aimed at the (very) wealthy is subject to different logics and yet intimately interrelated with policies targeting less privileged migrants. Ultimately, she argues, without an understanding of policies catering to wealthy migrants, we do not fully understand the range of political purposes migration policy is made to serve, nor can we appreciate the full inequality structuring cross-border movement.

Sarah Kunz is a Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Essex. Her research explores privileged migration and social inequality, with a focus on the politics of migration categories; the historical relationship between mobility, coloniality and racism; corporate management and migration, and elite migration intermediaries. Before joining the University of Essex, she was a Leverhulme Early Career Fellow and MMB member at the University of Bristol. Her Leverhulme-funded research focuses on the global Citizenship Industry, the private sector involved in developing, administering and promoting citizenship by investment (CBI). She continues to be affiliated with MMB and SPAIS as an Honorary Researcher.

To sign up for the webinar and receive the Zoom link please register via the Eventbrite page.